“I like this violence” 15 June 2007

It is often assumed that “men of violence” always wear masks and brandish weapons, but those who stand on the sidelines and cheer the fight are also men of violence, none more so than Assistant Secretary of State and US Envoy to the Middle East, David Welch.

“I like the violence” — these were Welch’s words when fighting erupted between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza earlier this year. Welch may be in a less celebratory mood right now, but not because the violence is worse — simply because his side (a small faction inside Fatah) is losing.

The fact that the Bush administration has been instrumental in trying to foment a Palestinian civil war has been clearly documented by Conflicts Forum, but since the press in Washington has been too timid to dig in to this story, it has largely been ignored. ::snip::

[B]oth leaderships are hemmed in. Abbas appears to be entirely dependent on foreign and Israeli support and unable to take decisions independent of a corrupt, self-serving clique. Hamas, whatever intentions it has is likely to find itself under an even tighter siege in Gaza.

Abbas, backed by Israel and the US, has called for a multinational force in Gaza. Hamas has rejected this, saying it would be viewed as an “occupying force.” Indeed, they have reason to be suspicious: for decades Israel and the US blocked calls for an international protection force for Palestinians. The multinational force, Hamas fears, would not be there to protect Palestinians from their Israeli occupiers, but to perform the proxy role of protecting Israel’s interests that Dahlan’s forces are longer able to carry out and to counter the resistance — just as the multinational force was supposed to do in Lebanon after the July 2006 war.

Wise leaders in Israel and the United States would recognize that Hamas is not a passing phenomenon, and that they can never create puppet leaders who will be able to compete against a popular resistance movement. But there are no signs of wisdom: the US has now asked Israel to “loosen its grip” in the West Bank to try to give Abbas a boost. Although the Bush doctrine has suffered a blow, the Palestinian people have not won any great victory. The sordid game at their expense continues.

Armed Palestinian women, a show of force in GAZA during the assault on Lebanon, July 18, 2006

As a calm settled over Gaza following five days of fighting in which Hamas completed its conquest of the Gaza Strip from its Fatah rivals, Palestinian leaders began to focus on the political aftermath.

President Mahmoud Abbas started the process of forming an emergency government in the West Bank city of Ramallah, choosing Salam Fayyad, a political independent, to take the lead as prime minister, according to several reports. He was finance minister in the Hamas-led unity government that Mr. Abbas dismissed on Thursday.

It was not clear that Mr. Abbas had the power to govern both the West Bank and Gaza territories.

“Prime Minister Haniya remains the head of the government even if it was dissolved by the president,” Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said. ‘’In practical terms, these decisions are worthless.”

Even Mr. Abbas’ supporters were dubious. “An emergency government would be meaningless here,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at the Fatah-affiliated Al Azhar University in Gaza. “It wouldn’t be able to do anything. Hamas is everywhere. That’s the bottom line.”

Hamas released 10 senior Fatah leaders detained in the Gaza fighting and announced a prisoner amnesty plan, according to wire reports. Other Fatah leaders — close to 100, according to The Associated Press — arrived in Egypt today after fleeing the Gaza fighting on a fishing boat. On the diplomatic front, the so-called quartet of Middle East peace negotiators — the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union — planned talks today on boosting Mr. Abbas.

There’s a Spanish proverb that goes something like this: “Raise crows, and they will pluck out your eyes.” Israel nurtured Hamas as a foil to Fatah, thinking it would be easy to manipulate I suppose, or maybe they didn’t bother to think ahead, just did it as a short-term, short-sighted scheme to undercut Fatah and Arafat, figuring they’d deal with the future ramifications when the future became the present. In recent years, they’ve also been doing all they can to promote Fatah at the expense of Hamas, encouraging internecine fighting in the hopes of provoking a civil war that would neuter both groups. Well, they sure got that wrong, didn’t they? Now Hamas is completely in control of Gaza, and after having been driven out of there, how likely is it that West Bank Palestinians will remain faithful to Fatah, a compromised and apparently toothless entity?

Bush administration officials said Thursday that they had been discussing the idea of largely acquiescing in the takeover of Gaza by the militant Islamic group Hamas and trying instead to help the Fatah party of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, retain its stronghold in the West Bank.

The United States had quietly encouraged Mr. Abbas to dissolve the Palestinian government and dismiss Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, steps that Mr. Abbas announced Thursday, administration officials said. Before the announcement, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Mr. Abbas to reiterate American support for the move, they said.

“President Abbas has exercised his lawful authority as the president of the Palestinian Authority, as the leader of the Palestinian people,” Ms. Rice said. “We fully support him and his decision to try and end this crisis of the Palestinian people and to give them an opportunity for — to return to peace and a better future.”

The state of emergency that Mr. Abbas announced has underscored the widening rift separating Gaza, where Hamas has largely routed Fatah’s forces, and the West Bank, where Mr. Abbas still has a strong base.

But diplomats and Middle East experts said a “West Bank first” strategy might now be the last option for Ms. Rice to salvage something from her plans to push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

The State Department insisted that the United States had no plans to abandon Palestinians living in Gaza.

Many diplomats and Middle East experts said they read Mr. Abbas’s decision as an attempt to cut his losses in Gaza and consolidate power in the West Bank. Israeli officials are promoting a proposal that the West Bank and Gaza be viewed as separate entities, and that Israel act more forcefully in Gaza to crack down on Hamas militants.

Senior Bush administration officials said no decision had been made. Some State Department officials argue that the administration could only support such a separation if Israel agreed to make political concessions to Mr. Abbas in the West Bank, with the goal of undermining Hamas in the eyes of Palestinians by improving life in the West Bank.

But it would be diplomatically perilous for the United States to be seen as turning its back on Gaza. Almost half of the Palestinian population lives on the teeming strip of land. A more desperate Gaza could become a breeding ground for Al Qaeda.

Compared to Condeleeza Rice, Dean Rusk was a combination of Metternich and Bismark.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Palestinian security officials said an Israeli tank shell killed six people — including five children — in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on Thursday, but the Israeli military denied there was any army fire in the area.

Hamas security officials initially reported that four children were killed, but hospital officials said five children from the Abu Matrok family, all under 16, had died.

Fatah security officials said the children were in a car with an adult driver, who was also killed.

JJB wonders in the last thread about the ease in which scum-suckers like Romney can tell a woman to die for HIS principles. Well, it’s a no-brainer. Every fetus is pwecious, but every woman is interchangeable. Expendable. If she dies saving the precious fetus, her husband can just go get another fetus-generator for himself and the kids. What’s the problem ?

Join us next time when we explain why Jeebus loves school re-segregation and shooting at Mexicans. :p

Via Chris Floyd – a quote from Conflict Forums (which I found when googling for that ridiculous quote by Welch – who the hell is that guy??)

Deputy National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams — who Newsweek recently described as “the last neocon standing” — has had it about for some months now that the U.S. is not only not interested in dealing with Hamas, it is working to ensure its failure. In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas elections, last January [2006], Abrams greeted a group of Palestinian businessmen in his White House office with talk of a “hard coup” against the newly-elected Hamas government — the violent overthrow of their leadership with arms supplied by the United States. While the businessmen were shocked, Abrams was adamant — the U.S. had to support Fatah with guns, ammunition and training, so that they could fight Hamas for control of the Palestinian government…

The Abrams program was initially conceived in February of 2006 by a group of White House officials who wanted to shape a coherent and tough response to the Hamas electoral victory of January…Since at least August [2006], Rice, Abrams and U.S. envoy David Welch have been its primary advocates and the program has been subsumed as a “part of the State Department’s Middle East initiative.”

The decision to drop Pace has fed the political debate in Washington over the Iraq war. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid caused a stir when he said Pace had failed in his job of providing Congress a candid assessment on the war. Democrats typically have shied from stinging comments about military officers, instead focusing criticism on Bush and administration policies in Iraq.

It is evident that Reid was trying to cover this administrations ass… by poisoning the bloggy waters against Pace. This is exactly what I was referring to the other day as to why Powell never “ran to the Dems for cover”… to no surprise he would have just found MORE GOPer in Dem clothing…. like Pace just found out… no shelter from the neocon storm in either party.

Now it makes sense why some one “dropped the dime” on Reid’s backstabbing. I guess it hasn’t occurred to the Democrats that even the military doesn’t believe in the war.

I guess it has gone unnoticed to Reid this revolving door in Iraq…. Pace is what the 4th … 5th general to have been replaced when reality encroaches too much on the fantasy.

The only “wrong impression” the Dems gave is that they wanted to end the war… not that they couldn’t.

They don’t want to PERIOD… as proof as the blogger for hire Kos touting a verifiable neocon Kerrey… not only do the Dem NOT want to end the war … but this last little “tell” is a sure fire signal that the DEMS WANT TO ATTACK IRAN.

#6. Obviously, eugene just needs to “buck up”. Didn’t he get the memo? “Ideology” is for lusers. As for Bowers, he’s a day late and a dollar short – or maybe he just needs a date.

I started blogging on MyDD at a time in my life when little else was going well. My academic career was in the toilet, and the thought of further teaching was literally giving me nightmares. Financially, I was so badly off, that I thought I was going to have to move out of my apartment. I had gone on exactly one date in the previous fourteen months. Considering the situation I was in, when Jerome gave me this chance, I latched onto the site and worked on building it up as though my life depended on it. In some ways, maybe it did.

Oh, and don’t miss the list of his greatest hits! Posts for the ages, no doubt.

Keep in mind, Chris Floyd was banned at Little Orange Footballs, over some ridiculous charge that he and one of his associates were using their UIDs for sockpuppet purposes. Floyd and the other person (can’t remember the name) accidentally posted identical diaries, IIRC, both were in the habit of cross-posting material from Empire Burlesque at dKos, and as it happened they put up the same piece a few hours apart. The mistake was logically explained, but they banned the both of them anyway. Floyd had already ruffled the feathers of a few simpleminded Kossack biggies, so it was really just an excuse rather than a cause.

A powerful explosion that reduced a large Sunni Arab mosque to rubble in the southern city of Basra this morning signaled that the cycle of revenge violence following the destruction of the Shiite shrine in Samarra has not entirely unfolded.

Although there had been scattered reprisal attacks on Sunni shrines on Wednesday and early Thursday in the hours after the Samarra shrine’s minarets were demolished, strenuous calls for restraint by political and religious figures as well as strict security measures appeared to halt broader violence.

That contrasted with the spate of violence a year ago when 15 people were killed in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the shrine’s golden dome and three imams were killed and a fourth kidnapped. That set off a cycle of sectarian attacks that has yet to stop.

However, it could be that this time, the worst violence occurs once curfews are lifted in Baghdad and elsewhere over the weekend and, that much like last year, the cycle of reprisal killings will unwind over weeks and months. “We won’t see so much right away,” predicted an official in the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, “It will come later.”

Now, as I recall, when the golden dome of the Samarra shrine was destroyed last year, that “immediate aftermath” now said to be so horrible was considered to be small potatoes, and a huge collective sigh of relief was heard throughout the MSM. I guess they figured the Shiite retaliation would consist of armed mobs of hundreds of thousands of people descending on Sunni neighborhoods, pillaging, killing, etc. rather than the more calibrated and cold-blooded militia actions that have followed. It took several weeks (at least) for it to become obvious that the civil conflict had reached a new and deadlier stage. I guess it’s asking too much for them to recognize the obvious, i.e., that matters are completely out of control over there and the violence is only going to escalate.

Finally, this requires us to become activists. It’s been a tough couple decades for activism. Locked in an increasingly obsolete 1960s paradigm, progressive activism has not yet caught up with the reality of where most Americans are at. Happily we are best positioned to help provide those solutions. We must become organizers and activists again. We must reach beyond our comfort zones and our blog niches to engage others who are essential to our political movement. We must speak with the poor. With people of color. With those in rural areas and in inner cities and in suburbs. We must be willing to take our message to anyone who will listen.

A cheap blurberation. “we must speak with the poor”. what presumption…

D. Throat, interesting perspective on this whole mess. So it’s possible that Reid was using the blahhgers to criticize Pace? Giving cover to Bush is certainly what they’ve been doing all along. I think it’s obvious now that they do not intend to end this war and all bills they submitted were game-playing.

But the blahhgers missed the most important statement he made re Pace, so someone goes to Politico to make sure it gets out? Could be …

Dk is there for them to use, that’s for sure …. I don’t get why they think that using DK will benefit them in anyway since DK has no influence anymore over what people think.

It really is funny to see the blahgers try to help Reid out of what they thought was a jam, and he goes ahead and undermines them completely.

That’s what happens when you become a dupe of politicians which is why the Internet was never supposed to fall into that trap! Dk, a complete and utter mess! Really, they should just fold it up, or admit they are just the propaganda ‘catapult’ for the Dems same as Freerepublic is for the Repubs.

That stuff you quote sounds so stilted it could be a Babelfish translation.

It doesn’t seem to occur to these idiots that in order to meet people, you have to turn off the computer, leave your house and, you know, meet people. And once you do that, it helps if you listen to what they have to say and not tell them to shut up and follow orders.

Armando, EMSOCK, Bowers, Stoller and Eugene…Controlled Dissent and guided turn to the “left”

Same old story and same MO…. this is exactly what Simon Rosenberg did when he harnessed Armstrong and Kos and steered the untamed blogosphere to the extreme right… all in the name of “progressivism”…. now the next faux generation of faux progressive bloggers…. and so on and so on and so on.

Let’s not forget that Bowers used to be Lieberman’s number one unabashed cheerleader. They beaten this horse to death … now the Boyz are on to greener pastures where they can start their con all over again.

Frankly, I am smelling a sell off…. talk about killing the hen that laid the golden eggs…. Kos not only killed his “porgressive” blog… then he plucked it and boiled it till there was nothing left. DK is now nothing but a shell propping up pathetic Dems like Reid and touting for neocons and Republicans like Arnold….TIME TO SELL.

Hiliary and Obama did not come running begging Kos to buy ads… if he wants to salvage anything he has to sell before the elections while the site still has earnings potential… afterwards if it is still in Kos’s hands it will sink like a rock… people have seen thru the facade to the tiny little man behind the curtain playing the 80,000 dollar piano.

Armando, EMSOCK… now Bowers and Stoller are just jumping ship before the handover… as I can see they all were given parachutes. They are all good at what they do “conning people” therefore they will always be in demand… which is why Trippi plucked Armstrong during his stock conning days… to become a political conman… no difference.

It doesn’t seem to occur to these idiots that in order to meet people, you have to turn off the computer, leave your house and, you know, meet people.

Pssst…that does not apply to Elise. Riots would ensue. Fab schoolhouse rulers would be flying everywhere as she tried to defend herself against the unruly mobs and she would be dragged off screaming “Read the FAQs! Read the FAQs!”

The hilarious thing is that eugene – who the Boyz long ago fingered as one to speak for the wimmens (like Kid O and a few others) – did an anti rural post at LSF long ago. It was breathlessly reactionary and dismissive of rural enclaves just outside … hmmm Seattle iirc. Kings Co, again iirc.

Will see if I can find it. I instantly contacted em dash (“editor” at LSF then) and suggested that a excellent long reply comment from a Kings Co resident be expanded and put on the FP. His post was so very unpleasant.

Politicians love to talk, so she has no problem getting them on the air.

yeah. that reminds me of something i read recently during the imus thing by Tim Noah speaking about the politican’s desire for access to radio or tv time. Noah used a wonderful washington anecdote on the politicians’ love of a free meal to riff into their desire for video/audio time in the media.

the anecdote is credited to perle mesta. and perle’s famous advice about how to draw Washington’s power set to a soiree was:

“Hang a lamb chop in the window.”

i think there’s a great deal of chop hanging going on between GOP golden boy harry reid and the netroots FPers. reid has his little chops of “politician proximity” dangling and the netroots has little spinability and an audience chops. i sit here and laugh and can’t help but think of perle.

Perle Skirvin Mesta (October 12, 1889 – March 16, 1975) was an American society figure, political hostess, and U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg (1949-1953).

Mesta was known as the “hostess with the mostes [sic]” for her lavish parties featuring the brightest stars of Washington, D.C., society, including artists, entertainers and many top-level national political figures.

She was born Pearl Skirvin, in Sturgis, Michigan, a daughter of William Balser Skirvin, an original 89er who became a wealthy Oklahoma oilman and founder of the Skirvin Hotel. Her younger sister was a silent-film actress, Marguerite Skirvin (1896-1963). She married steel manufacturer and engineer George Mesta in 1916, but was widowed in 1925; she was the only heir to his $78 million fortune.[1] Mesta settled in Newport, Rhode Island, but moved to Washington D.C., in 1940. Four years later, Mesta changed the spelling of her first name to Perle.[2]

She was active in the National Woman’s Party and was an early supporter of an Equal Rights Amendment. She switched to the Democratic Party in 1940 and was an early supporter of Harry Truman, who rewarded her with the ambassadorship to Luxembourg where she launched the Nordstrom Sisters.

But Mesta is most noted for her parties, which brought together senators, congressmen, cabinet secretaries, and other luminaries in bipartisan soirées of high-class glamour. Invitation to a Mesta party was a sure sign that one had reached the inner circle of Washington political society…

reid and his phonemates arent in perle’s class. pork chops is all “they got”.

The cognitive dissonance of rural voters is shocking. The greed and selfishness is amazing. They whine more often than a four year old.

Maybe that’s a bit harsh. But until someone explains to me how exactly it is we are supposed to bridge the urban/rural divide, when the rural voters – many of whom are simply transplanted urbanites in search of a cheap investment – aren’t making sense, I think I’d rather build up my strength in the cities and battle over the suburbs.

This isn’t to say we should write off the red states, or red state Democrats. I’m not that far gone. But we must be realistic about the challenges we face in rebuilding rural support. It’s not just a matter of going down and talking to them (though that’d probably help). The economics are compelling and yet not easily solved. And sometimes when you try and talk to someone, they simply don’t listen.

The property rights rebellion matters, and it bears watching.

Don’t miss badger at # 7 and # 11 – or Izzy at # 10 comments (they also have comments further on at 21 and 24, too)

right , because the civil rights marches sit ins and protests did nothing. if only those dirty hippies had a computer so they could silently blog their complaints.

i realized that kos was a fraud the day he posted his diary blowing off the protests in washington , smugly dismissing people who died on their feet in protest to favor his reality based community of action heroes who stayed inside all day and checked email. and hunted twolls who disrupt the otherwise lucid stream of thought at dk…

I emailed it. I specifically asked her if I could use it when I was still at dk. My plan was to insert it whenever someone posted “Dems need balls”, etc. diaries or comments. But now I go to sites where people don’t talk like that. Well, I used it at BMT twice.

I’ve been impressed lately with how poorly people today understand the sixties. To the media, of course, the decade was just about wearing funny clothes and long hair, taking drugs and protesting. It came and went, like all fashions. Because that’s what the media are about—fashions, surfaces, fads. They can’t deal with long-term trends—they’re too busy with the moment. Long-term to them is a few months.

Many of my friends, on the other hand, absurdly idealize the sixties and compare it favorably with the present. They seem to have forgotten that in the sixties what we think of as a red state mentality characterized virtually the entire nation. The sixties innovators were long on visibility but short on numbers. It’s important to remember that after all the huge marches and protests between 1969 and 1971, Nixon won the 1972 election in a landslide. Not in a close, probably stolen election, but in a landslide. It’s important to keep things in perspective.

The sixties were after all just a beginning. And while beginnings are fun and fascinating and exciting, they only become significant if what has begun continues to grow. And in this, most important sense, the sixties never ended. Did Jim Crow return to the South? Did blacks disappear from TV? Did women go back in the kitchen and stop going to professional schools? Did sex become taboo in the media and people start having to pretend they were married to live together or have children? Did interest in New Age ideas, alternative medicine, and organic foods suddenly come to an end? Did everyone revert to the environmental habits of the 1950s? Did people stop protesting wars?

The fact is, all those trends that began in the sixties have flowered and multiplied in the ensuing decades. If this weren’t so—if it had all just blown over, the neo-cons wouldn’t exist. The fundamentalist backlash that has swept the United States during the past two decades was a frightened reaction to the radical changes that began in the sixties. It was the overthrowing of a whole cluster of fundamental cultural assumptions at once that struck terror in the hearts of traditionalists the world over.

Few people at the time recognized the common denominator to these movements, and the various groups involved–hippies, anti-war protesters, civil rights activists, feminists–engaged in loud and bitter arguments about priorities. But in fact an entire cultural premise was being overthrown.

So what was this overthrowing about, and what is its core?

It has been said that there’s a “culture war” being waged around the world, one side of which is conservative Islam. But the real culture clash is taking place within Islam, as well as within the United States, within the corporate world, within science, within the arts. This is not a conflict between nations, or between religious traditions, or between left and right. The struggle is taking place WITHIN every nation, every political party, every religious tradition, every institution, every individual. No group of people gathered together can long be free of this conflict, which is the most profound alteration in human culture since the invention of agriculture.

It’s a double-edged sword, but you don’t simply abandon the war against the fundamentalists by becoming a compromising pushover. You fight back – hard. That’s what the boyz don’t seem to get. It’s a process.

JJB, getting another cat is a good suggestion but I can’t do that because our other cat, Martin, a fluffy grey guy, has been waiting years to take Felix’s place as Head Cat. I’m sure he would take it amiss if we introduced another cat to the household.

#39 – cad, I think the Boyz hate the ’60s because they are all conservative Republicans at heart. Check out this guy Brent Rasmussen (alias DarkSyde). Does he not look like a conservative? And here is his descriptor on his DKos homepage:

I’m a former moderate conservative who is fed up with Bush and Company.

He always gave me the creepycrawlies – something about his tone and his attitude was unsavory – but I only found out recently that he was a self-confessed “former” conservative.

well I think Darksyde is rather the demographic wee kos aims for…. and as I REALLY don’t go to Kos much at all, I had no idea that the likes of Rimjob’s People magazine diary (with a thread of hanging tongues and hanging whatever else) was a regular feature.

Bowers says that Jerome Armstrong provided him with a living. Where did he get the money to do that? Wasn’t his excuse for becoming an internet conman that he had so many debts and needed the money?

As for this ‘revolution’! Well, they finally realized the ‘game’ is over. They simply cannot reign in the anger anymore. The final straw for those who reluctantly went along for the past few years, was the Iraq War games played by Democrats.

That that diary on the ‘rulzzzz’ was the most important topic on DK last night while the world is on fire (thanks for your excellent OP, Marisacat) , rec’d by only by the usual mob, demonstrated and was commented on by many, how out of touch these operators are with the pulse of the country. They had a good run, at least Marcos got something out of it, for anyone whose goal it was to make him rich.

But anyone who would follow any individual who was even remotely connected to these people, will just end up three years from, wondering again, ‘what happened’.

The sad thing is that they hindered those who were not in it for their own personal gain, or careers, from scaring the shit out of these politicians. Someone put money behind them, imo, to stop the growing influence of the Internet.

I don’t and will never trust anyone who was a part of that. The country is worse off now than it ever was in my memory. The ME is out of control, and I don’t know if anything can be done about it.

The BBBS and their troll patrols facilitated all of it. Why people did not see that a strategy of telling politicians ‘we don’t like what you’re doing and we’ll you during the primaries, but we’ll be on board once the general election rolls around’, was anything other sheer stupidy, I’ll never understand.

I love the appearance in Eugene’s diary of the ‘fascist bimbo’ (thanks catnip I think) attempting to appear intelligent!

As for Bowers and Stoller, I agree that it’s going to be interesting to see who’s funding them this time. To think they can turn around now and ‘move left’ is laughable. These are not the people who will accomplish anything. They have not only not accomplished anything, they have contributed to where we are today.

Nine Lives makes a flaked tuna (red) with sort of pellets of orangish cheese (I am not tasting it to determine if cheddar or American process… LOL) but she loves it. Also Friskies makes a turkey with cheese … I buy those 20, 30 at time when on sale at 30 cents a can.

who amongst us men are too sound on feminism? I likes my wimenz tuh gets their handz durty. uh grrrrl who don’t wears no makeup. all fur wimenz sufferej and eekwull payz an all. but I iz still just a man. all weighz undur suspishuhn.

My team won the chili cook-off by the way. got a $25 gift certificate. didn’t win the Food factor contest because it was a timed thing. never could get everything down first, but I still got it down and held it 😉

hahahahha… as long as they all punch and slash at each other, go for it (from Breaking Blue at MyDD)

On Obama’s memo: “Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)” (Jerome Armstrong)

I think it’s reached the point where Obama can stop merely blaming his staff for their screw-ups. This is Rush Limbaugh land that Obama’s campaign has wandered into:

Shortly after the Clinton campaign released the financial information, the campaign of Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, circulated to news organizations — on what it demanded be a not-for-attribution-basis — a scathing analysis.

It called Mrs. Clinton “Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)” in its headline. The document referred to the investment in India and Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raising efforts among Indian-Americans.

Posted at 06/15/2007 04:04:00 PM EST – #

I first saw this mentioned at Jeralyn’s TL last night… she all het up, (in the bag for Hillary is my take) and dear girl, she still believes that “blind trusts” are, like,, you know blind.

Action Alert! Action Alert! Calling all Diary Police! If you are a TU get your rear end over to DK immediately!

OMG!! A major RULE has been broken at DK in a diary that is currently on the Rec. list!! Who does not remember the belabored meanderings of Hunter et all about CALLING OUT ANOTHER KOSSACK in a diary title?

But ironically, and hilariously, the woman who wrote the distressed diary on the ‘rulzzzzz’ is IN the diary and for some reason, has failed to demand that the diarist ‘Delete that Title it is against the rulzzz’ Why are she and the FPer who are both in the diary, not waving a copy of the FAQS? Lol! Enquiring minds want to know! Are they falling apart or could it be that THIS diary is one that they like?

We just report, you all must decide! Lol!

Hypocrites as always! Another perfect example of why they have no credibility!!

Lol, Cad …. yes, Yrly kos should be very interesting. I’m sure they will protect the visiting servants of the people from the people as much as they can.

Damage control everywhere on dk – kos is demanding that the leadership take action on, guess what? Lol! Gay Rights! See, he IS a progressive! Stop saying you will not contribute another dime to the party until they step up to the plate and do their jobs! Forget the war, let’s focus on those ‘single issue’ voters! Oops, but I thought he hated single issue voters! So hard to keep up with the rulz!

Oh, and I still want to know what it is about Ron Paul that he so admires, because his diary kops are working hard to auto-ban all Ron Paul supporters on his very own site!

well, I suppose I should be ashamed, but I agreed w/ Eugene on his contempt for the rural voters … I’m from those people, and I’ve spent my life running away from that parochial mindset. It sickens me … it still does, and lambs so eager to be slaughtered are hard to work up much sympathy.

Israel has been careful not to become involved in the fighting, and Housing and Construction Minister Meir Sheetrit (Kadima) said Friday that despite calls from the right for Israel to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, from which it withdrew in 2005, Israel would not move in to confront Hamas, which is sworn to destroy it.

“There is no intention to re-enter that swamp, Gaza, in this situation,” Sheetrit told Israel Radio. “At this point, Israel has no reason to intervene.”

Off for a nap now.

Congrats on winning the chili cook-off, Kevin. And, because I’m too lazy to scroll back, thanks to whoever put up that info about Chris Floyd’s banning. I thought he’d been turfed for being too radical. Their rules are going to come back to haunt them big time in the end.

I agree that some lefties SHOULD talk to them, it just shouldn’t be ME. Or any snotty rationalist atheist loner LIKE me. Hell, I’m not fit to interact w/ most people in a political context … most people drive me nuts and fill me w/ frustration.

Before I got my new position, one of the guys I worked w/ (studying to be a minister for some black church denomination … never paid any attention to which one), used to like to wind me up. Pretty conservative guy. I’d get mad and start beginning every sentence after a few minutes with: “you need to google …”

My supervisor used to say that he wanted to get me on the radio, so I could be a lefty shouter to offset the huge number of wingers on the radio here. He said my trademark could be shouting “NEXT” after I tell a caller what an idiot they were.

Oh, and as an aside, the guy who took over Holy Joe’s little third party has demanded Lieberman’s resignation as the party chairman. Speaking of CT, if you want to see some fucking ignorant, stupid voters, go to rural CT and the CT suburbs. I couldn’t move away from that place fast enough.

At times wiping away tears, a former interim U.S. attorney who became a key figure in the firing of eight federal prosecutors said his six-month tenure led him to believe that public service was “not worth it.”

Tim Griffin, a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove, said the allure of working at the White House and National Guard commitments that took him to Iraq kept him away from Arkansas and his wife too long.

Griffin replaced Bud Cummins, one of eight federal prosecutors either fired or forced out last year. Griffin said Cummins had told him in April 2006 about his coming departure as chief federal prosecutor in Arkansas’ eastern district.

They are such fucking bastards they don’t even have the stones to do PATRONAGE with any fucking style.

MCat – I forget how I came across Mad Cow Productions, but it was sometime in late 2001. They did a bunch of fantastic background research into the FL flight school that Atta and others attended & came to the conclusion, for good reason, that it was a CIA drug-smuggling front. Interestingly enough the owner of that school got awarded a huge DOD contract in 2002 when there were other, much more qualified firms, bidding for the same contract. Things that make you go ‘hmmm’…

TWO people living in rural Washington state, said that ONLY Republicans listened to them.

Considering the truly disgusting shape of the WA state Democratic party I would say that that tendency isn’t confined to rural Dems. The blogs and particularly DK are innundated with WA state operatives (Eugene, RonK and MCJOan come to mind) Nothing those assholes have ever written indicate they actually converse with voters here, much less listen to them.

Worse, the growing number of air strikes shows that, despite what the Marines have accomplished in Anbar province and Gen. Petraeus’ best efforts, our high command remains as incapable as ever of grasping Fourth Generation war. To put it bluntly, there is no surer or faster way to lose in 4GW than by calling in airstrikes. It is a disaster on every level. Physically, it inevitably kills far more civilians than enemies, enraging the population against us and driving them into the arms of our opponents. Mentally, it tells the insurgents we are cowards who only dare fight them from 20,000 feet in the air. Morally, it turns us into Goliath, a monster every real man has to fight. So negative are the results of air strikes in this kind of war that there is only one possible good number of them: zero (unless we are employing the “Hama model,” which we are not).

What explains this military lunacy, beyond simple desperation? Part of the answer, I suspect, is Air Force generals. Jointness demands they get their share of command billets in Iraq, and with very few exceptions they are mere military technicians. They know how to put bombs on targets, but they know nothing else. So, they do what they know how to do, with no comprehension of the consequences.

In fact, the U.S. Air Force recently announced it is developing its own counter-insurgency doctrine, precisely because “some people” are suggesting air strikes are counterproductive in such conflicts. Well, yes, that is what anyone with any understanding of counter-insurgency would suggest. The Air Force, of course, cares not a whit about the realities of counter-insurgency. It cares only about protecting its bureaucratic turf, its myth of “winning through air power” and its high-performance fighter-bombers, which truly are its knights in shining armor, useful only for tournaments.

an F-16 was brought down?!?! I haven’t seen that. Webb was lovingly interviewed on NPR this morning, and no, I won’t link to it. I threw up in my mouth a little listening to it as I walked to work. More paeons to militarism and being willing to kill, no matter how unjust the cause. Fucker.

“Bradley J. Schlozman is systematically attempting to purge all Civil Rights appellate attorneys hired under Democratic administrations,” the lawyer wrote, saying that he appeared to be “targeting minority women lawyers” in the section and was replacing them with “white, invariably Christian men.” The lawyer also alleged that “Schlozman told one recently hired attorney that it was his intention to drive these attorneys out of the Appellate Section so that he could replace them with ‘good Americans.'”

The anonymous complaint named three female, minority lawyers whom Schlozman had transferred out of the appellate section (of African-American, Jewish, and Chinese ethnicity, respectively) for no apparent reason. And in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week in response to questions from senators, the Justice Department confirmed that all three had been transferred out by Schlozman — and then transferred back in after Schlozman had left the Division.

MItm-thanks for the link to the lind article–I came across it somewhere today, but forgot where before I had time to read it.

I notice the CNN site is talking about the internally displaced Iraqis living in refugee camps. (most of the wealthier and educated have been able to flee) so the GWOT is now creating “Palestine II” And if they have their way I guess there will be more sequels than Rocky.

I’m at the point in the Felton book where he is recounting situations where, for essentially PC reasons, the Central Command for the US army, put security contractors in positions where they had to function as an army. Cuz CC refused to give them support when under siege. Asked them to tone down their rhetoric, etc.

Our entire political establishment is littered w/ former prosecutors who tried minorities and the poor in the press, with DA’s who frog-marched minor mob figures or conmen before cameras (ie Rudy Guiliani). We have a system BUILT on fucking over people who can’t defend themselves. It’s part of the job. IT’S EXPECTED AND APPLAUDED. Perverts who respond to reporters pretending to be 16, inner-city dropouts slinging dope … but what Nifong did is BEYOND THE FUCKING PALE. What makes that case special is that the victims were rich white boys.

Not that I want innocent men, even spoiled rich white kids who play a game they stole from people their ancestors slaughtered, to go to jail, but zealous prosecutors and shitty police work destroy people’s (mostly poor and brown people’s) lives ALL THE FUCKING TIME in this country. Is anybody going after the bastards who destroyed Larry Peterson’s life, or any of the countless others?

The military is saying the F-16 downing was an ‘accident’. Mitm, that piece on the Air Force bombing in Iraq is excellent. They’re doing the same thing in Afghanistan, enraging the population as more and more civilians are killed.

It’s the public scalpings that are finally getting to me, though, I think. Kierdubois

Kierdubois, that was what did it for me – mostly perfectly decent people, expressing frustration at what is happening to their country. It didn’t just start, it’s been going on at DK with the help of the thread thugs, and the ‘rulezzzz’ enforcers, some of whom were rewarded, with being allowed to post on the FP. Many will sell their souls for that miserable privilege. In your diary on Hell that would have been an interesting inclusion. ‘What does it profit a man to sell his soul etc. ….’

Thousands of people have been banned from dk, which contributes to the backlash they are getting now. They never saw posters as people, many times far more intelligent than the little band of thugs that roams the threads and the hidden comments over there. People who wil not be silenced, and certainly not by people like them.

I laughed when I read Durbin’s diary the other day, talking about blogs giving people a right to be heard. I meant to email his office to ask him was he joking, posting something like that on DK of all places! But there’s so much to be furious about, I forgot about it until now.

If you were writing a screenplay about Nazis ruling America after winning WW2 (as in Len Deighton’s SSGB) and you were trying to find a name for the earnest young True Believer Nazi, could you do any better than “Bradley J. Schlozman”?

Mitm, Griffin cries like a baby now because they were caught. Gonzales is still there, and Bush says he’ll stay as long as he wants him to.

But what really bothers me about these revelations is that we knew about all this at least as far back as 2004. Greg Palast, for one, wrote about the caging of voters, eg, before the Nov Election that year. Of course he was thrashed recently on DK! One of the few people who actually had the guts to tell the truth when it was NOT safe to do so.

I noticed an Opol diary with nearly 100 recs slipping off the diary list. At the same time, another diary made it to the rec list with 15 Recs! It many have more now, but it had 9 comments and 15 recs when it landed there! They would not manipulate the diary list, I’m sure!

The aerial bombings are fueling a lot of anger in Afghanistan as well. Karzai tries to fight back, whining about all of the dead civilians, and NATO can’t do anything about it because they’re being done by the US military. Same shit. Different country. Same results. More rebels created. But they keep right on doing it.

A Republican senator blocked a vote in the Judiciary Committee on whether to authorize subpoenas to the Justice Department to obtain secret legal opinions and other documents related to the National Security Agency’s program of domestic eavesdropping. The action by Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona will block the vote for a week. After the vote next Thursday, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the committee, can decide whether to issue the subpoenas or use them as leverage in negotiations with the Bush administration over access to the documents.

you know, both statements I made before are absolutely true. Every woman I’ve ever dated has been a tomboy. they’re lower maintenance and you don’t wait around as long while they try to find the absolute perfect pair of shoes. I’m also always under this silent cloud of suspicion because I have glands that secrete testosterone. can’t even joke about it without getting the cold shoulder. just wish you would all relax just a teensey bit. it’s not like I’ve ever had any involvement with the Tribal Police, or something. it’s easy to google too…

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) – After a lifetime of brutal treatment, including walking on burning embers, Bulgaria’s last three dancing bears will get to rest their paws at a mountain sanctuary, in an apparent end to the centuries-old performance tradition in the Balkans.

“Dancing”? More like “tortured”. Poor bears. So sad.

The bears are captured while still young. Their nose or lips are pierced, and a metal ring attached to a chain is inserted; the pain ensures instant submission.

The cubs are forced to walk on burning embers or a hot sheet of metal, and hop from one hind leg to the other in order to escape the burning, while their trainer beats a drum. The process is repeated until the bear learns to connect the drum to the pain.

It appears that they have Nancy Drew some sort of Macauley Caulkin critter in the new movie which I will never see, not just because I don’t see current movies, but the most important part of these “canonical” american books or cartoons, is that the reader is allowed to interpret. I thought it sucked when they did Peanuts specials on TV–though never a great fan of Peanuts, I preferred my imagination of their voices.

When I saw the pic accompanying the nytimes review of the movie….Nancy with 2 guys–knew it was lost. Guys were marginal in Nancy Drew mysteries. That was the fucking pleasure. A young woman gets herself embroiled in relative danger, and is not rescued by men. (as a plus, her mother is dead, so she is free of mother-nagging, and Hannah does the cooking and cleaning, and Daddy Carson Drew gives her a fucking car!)

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party – Hamas – and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today “Palestine” – and let’s keep those quotation marks in place – has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn’t like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.

No one asked – on our side – which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds – and goes on building – vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of “Palestine” still left to negotiate over ?

And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the “moderate” (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word “occupation”, who always referred to Israeli “redeployment” rather than “withdrawal”, a “leader” we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn’t vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic – which is how Hamas’s bloody victory will be represented – but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas’s Fatah and the rotten nature of the “Palestinian Authority”….

(twice today my eyeglasses have dropped on the floor–omen of blindness?)

as a native chicagoan…I think the nature of the daley machine has changed a bit, over the years. I’m not intimately informed, but is it something different than all the other political dynasties at play these days?

oh, and I really fucked up by not mentioning Bess or George in my Nancy Drew comments.

I’m different! When I was stressed out in my early teens I could feel my pituitary gland snapping its fingers–I mean really, at the exact location where the pituitary was on the physiomap-there was this snapping sensation going on.

well if you google the wif’s background… she spent iirc 10 years in the daley office (often glossed over or left out of bios) after leaving (quite early on) her associate spot (think I have that right, that she was still an associate, not too many years in) at a premier law firm (Sidley Austin). From the Daley office, she went straight to an essentially PR job at UC (associate dean) then to VP at UC Hospitals.

LOL And recently had to resign from a board spot (one of 6 boards she is on) at a subsidiary for Wal Mart. It just did not jive with the Obama rhetoric…

It’s fine, that is the way it works, but I don’t want to miss the point.

108-I had so many 1st editions, and by the time I was 8, I was caught up to the newest ones. I loved the triad of nancy george bess. George being the butch player, Bess being the hyperfemme, nancy between the two. It covered all we experienced in our lives as young girls. We loved all their manifestations of female because we knew it in ourselves and saw it all in the females of our lives. Even if we were 8.

Miss D: yes, Bess, the chubby girl, and George, who as I recall from the illustrations was angular and boylike, much like k.d. lang. The two kinds of women who are least desirable in our society. And Ned Nickerson struck me as a wimp. Of course I read the original Nancy Drews (Ned had a roadster and a raccoon coat and probably listened to Rudy Vallee) and not the revamped “modern” versions. They may have dumped Bess and George completely.

I further note that Velma in Scooby-Doo, who was plump and nerdy in the original cartoons, chunky orange sweater and all, was slimmed down in the more recent cartoons and was even seen in a bikini, with a toned waistline similar to Daphne’s. The clear message is: it’s OK if you’re the smartest one in the bunch, but you have to be physically attractive and show off your body.

Also, the live-action film versions of Scooby-Doo (like the world really needed those) turned the whole premise of the series on its head by blithely incorporating supernatural aspects which Velma was unable to debunk. Velma is no longer the Voice of Science and Reason Against Superstition.

When I grew up, my brother had a bookshelf full of Hardy Boys books & my sister had a bookshelf full of Bobbsey Twins… I read the bookshelf full of Bobbsey Twins, but that also might be because in my early years [6-9], I didn’t take an interest in reading & my sister was tasked with that chore by my parents [she was 6 years older]. Probably why the first sci-fi I started to read was Madaline L’Engle as well.

Sabrina, you’re not going to like this, but both you and Elise misspelled my first name the very same way.

Lol, Keirdubois, you are a virtual mind-reader. The last thing I want, is to have anything at all in common with an authoritarian bully, male or female. I can’t think of a greater incentive to ensure I never make that mistake again. My only excuse is not enough sleep these past few weeks? 🙂

Lol, Miss D – you little pretender you …

I heard something on the radio about Obama having made some deal regarding his house with a realtor that he is getting criticism for. I didn’t hear the details so don’t know what the story is. Why do they start these presidential races two years before the election? I’m already sick of all of them … especially since all of them won’t take bombing Iran off the table!

my question was about shaming, as you had related your practice of shaming Ron Paul supporters with reference to his racism and homophobia. i asked if you did the same to supporters of Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, who are complicit in a monstrous act of mass murder. certainly more shameful, in my view, than racism or homophobia. i’d sooner find common ground with a racist than with someone who thinks its ok to initiate war unconstitutionally and on such pretense. why? because i’m really a fan of the KKK? no. because i think war is obviously a greater evil than bigotry. so obviously that i have to wonder how it is that people who detest racism accept organized mass murder.

it doesn’t make any moral sense.

and your reply totally dodges the issue. i didn’t ask who you support, but why you choose to vilify someone for a particular evil while giving a pass to others for a greater evil. yes, racism is wrong. war is worse.

i’d prefer someone phobic of homosexuals over someone willing to initiate mass murder illegally and for no good reason. as i see it, such willingness expresses a far more severe form of bigotry – though unconscious and unrecognized by an unconscious society.

by Felix Culpa on Fri Jun 15, 2007 at 05:21:08 PM PDT

*
I’d sooner not find common ground with either (1+ / 0-)

and that was my point. I will not vote for Ron Paul. EVER. I will not vote for anyone who voted for the Iraq war in a primary. I will vote for whoever our nominee is. I’d like that to be Gore. If not, Obama it is.

Read Feminisms Wednesdays and Take Action

by Elise on Fri Jun 15, 2007 at 05:47:40 PM PDT

o
well, yeah, (0 / 0)

i’d rather not find common ground with either, too.

but why not answer the question i’ve asked: why vilify one while giving the other a pass?

by Felix Culpa on Fri Jun 15, 2007 at 05:51:33 PM PDT

+
I’ve already answered that. Paul is a REPUBLICAN. (0 / 0)

Read Feminisms Wednesdays and Take Action

by Elise on Fri Jun 15, 2007 at 07:23:50 PM PDT

#
ok (0 / 0)

so, party affiliation all by itself is the difference between morally reprehensible and morally acceptable?

i appreciate the honesty of the response, but i fail to find any genuine sense of morality. following the logic, if a Democrat and a Republican were to make the same racist comments, the Democrat would be acceptable and the Republican reprehensible. sounds like a parody of moral sentiment to me.

it does, though, a good job of explaining why more and more people are identifying as independents; while also suggesting why it is that it’s more acceptable to kill an Iraqi than to insult an African American. in short: the Iraqi belongs to another party.

Also I recall Nancy Drew being dragged into the whole Parker Stevenson/Shaun Cassidy Hardy Boys scene, as a token girl. Ugh. ’70s stuff is flooding back into my mind all of a sudden.

Sorry, my brain is set on “silly chatter” today, and jumping all over the place. I’m out to have fun. Tonight I made boeuf bourguignon (sp?) from Julia Child’s recipe. It’s quietly simmering away in the oven. Tomorrow I’ll put in the mushrooms and small white onions.

been about not just electing democrats, but also reforming the party. And I am not sure this is true:

We are at a place now where it is not merely about how many folks have a D after their name, but about what those with a D believe.

Otherwise, terrific diary. I believe that we can organize to get better democrats in to congress. But I am not sure it is a matter of left and right. Howard Dean is not left, still he is correct about almost everything and I would give my left leg to have him in the white house (there’s a back story on my left leg right now, don’t ask). Let’s say populist democrats who are right on certain issues. I guess we will have to take it on a case by case basis.

Blast from the past. Hardy Boys. Still the message of danger lurking around every corner but that could reasonably be solved with a notebook, maybe a compass, along with Chet Morton the jovial pie eating friend.

The Hard-On Boys in retrospect. No one got laid, jerked off, no nothin.

Their Perils were strictly limited then around their hometown of Cracker Port. No brutal cops with dogs and water cannnons. Back when life was simpler as we awaited mutually assured destruction. No need to wait for the next book anymore, nor much longer it seems for mutually assured destruction.

Grrr. how have I ever downplayed the plight of women in any of my comments? watched my mom struggle to near madness after her second divorce and actually learned to respect her. and every woman who’s ever had to do the same thing. I never even said it was unfair that I was dumped! that I felt terrible? yes. who did I blame? myself. why does everyone keep talking to me like the family dog? I know that I have a superiority/inferiority/fragility complex bouncing around in my pretty little head. but I’ve never said that women should be placed in a subservient position

The gypsy camp story. I was always intrigued by the geography. to me, nancy lived in some east coast suburb, but where did she find the gypsies (Rose! The cursed doll!) and those Asian characters who had that ceramic thing going?

In the sexually segregated YAA fiction, my brother was compelled to read the Hardy Boys–I did, too, because no one was going to read more than I did, in my domicile. I convinced my brother to read “The Secret in the Old Attic” and he confessed Nancy Drew was better than the Hardy Boys.

Kevin-relax. You are hallucinating troll-ratings on a site that doesn’t have them. And don’t give me that “old age” stuff. As a former sex kitten turned hermit, “you can’t always get what you want” is archival news.

Being alive and still being able to stand up is not a bad thing. So you don’t get people buying you a bagel toaster because you are getting married. Bagel toasters and silverware are cheap compared to marriages gone bad.

The steady sex thing is enviable, but might not be what it’s cracked up to be.

Kev – not making any comment on you. Please don’t interpret in that way. I just got started from the testosterone thin and elaborated from there. Honestly, it wasn’t a comment about you or your history [of which I know little].

Being alive and still being able to stand up is not a bad thing. So you don’t get people buying you a bagel toaster because you are getting married. Bagel toasters and silverware are cheap compared to marriages gone bad. — Miss Devore

Try explaining to them that Ron Paul is not a racist. He believes in ignoring race altogether. They are spreading a nasty charge of racism, just as they did about Cynthia McKinney, based on a murky story from years ago, which he has addressed.

While I disagree with him that you can ignore race at this point in time, he is suggesting an ideal that we are nowhere close to yet. It is more a hope for the future when we no longer need to see someone only in terms of their ethnicity, but as individuals. But the right wants Paul out of the debates, and they are spreading this smear, ‘swift-boating’ him and as they did with McKinney, DK is helping them out.

They are a very nasty bunch of people, black and white thinkers. Think of how they have smeared people from this blog, eg. The truth is not important, once they target someone, anything goes! Then they whine when people fight back and point out their idiocy!

Cynthia McKinney was attacked on that blog with the same mindless, unfounded charges. They could not argue against her voting record, so they accused of her anti-semitism, this despite her many Jewish friends debunking the charge.

This is why I sometimes think they are rightwingers posing as progressives. These attacks on both Paul and McKinney are identical to the rightwing attacks on both of them.

earth to meg, yes, I loved the Encylopedia Brown books. Thanks for the reminder – a blast from the past!

As for other girl-centered books – Harriet the Spy is a great book – a 20th century Huckleberry Finn. But most of the characters are girls, except for Sport, who is kind of a wimp. So nobody but the girl readers noticed how good it was.

as somebody who voted for paul in 88, i think he’s a smart man but he does associate with some extremely right loons. we don’t need less corporate de-regulation. it’s a perfect world paul imagines where race does not matter, but it clearly still does. we let new orleans flood because of “the other” attitude.

i liken paul to kucinich on the dem side, somebody who’ll be honest, therefore vilified and disqualified from the official game.

but why doesn’t anybody bring up kos calling arnie a “d” or calling himself a “libertarian democrat” whatever that is if the site is solely to elect blah blah blah…

So.

At Thursday's debate, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended their Medicare for All plan. They faced criticism from several rivals, including Senator Amy Klobuchar, who described it as a "bad idea," and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who claimed the bill shows Sanders and Warren do not "trust the American people."

At the third presidential primary debate in Houston, Texas, senator and 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Warren also spoke about her stance on U.S. trade policy and how "our trade policy in America has been broken for decades."

After being questioned about the crisis in Venezuela, Senator Bernie Sanders defended his vision of democratic socialism. "I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia: guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical le […]

Debate moderator Jorge Ramos of Univision grilled former Vice President Joe Biden over the Obama administration's deportation record. Biden refused to answer whether he did anything to prevent Obama from deporting a record 3 million people.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Friday demanded internal emails, detailed financial information and other company records from top executives of Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, and Alphabet Inc's Google, widening the antitrust probe of Big Tech.

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Friday asked a government watchdog to look into the Trump administration's decision to launch an antitrust probe into four automakers cooperating with California on tighter greenhouse gas emissions limits that Trump is trying to eliminate.

A lawyer for former FBI official Andrew McCabe pressed U.S. prosecutors on Friday to drop their politically sensitive case against him, citing reports that suggest they may be having trouble securing criminal charges.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.